The game is the artistic engine in the work of the illustrator Reinaldo Sosa
Reinaldo Sosa (Gran Canaria. Gáldar, 1975), multifaceted creator, graphic designer, illustrator and plastic artist is currently, and for ten years, founding partner of the Agencia Kinewa, ideas of the country. Already at a very young age, he saw his vocation clearly and began his artistic studies at the Las Palmas School of Art, where he graduated as a Technical Specialist in Advertising Drawing. His passion for painting made him continue his training in plastic arts, graduating in Fine Arts from the University of La Laguna and finishing this stage in Carrara, Italian lands known for its famous marble. He carried out doctoral studies at the University of Granada and finished off with a Specialized Master’s Degree in Advertising in Madrid. In this city he works for several design and advertising agencies, returning to his homeland in 2004.
SOTA, CABALLO Y REI, is his first individual exhibition and we can visit it from July 1 to 31, 2022 in the multipurpose room of the Agáldar Museum, Gáldar (Gran Canaria). The sample comprises nearly thirty digital works on various supports (paper, canvas…) and eight sculptural pieces.
The name given to the sample, SOTA, CABALLO Y REI, has a double meaning. On the one hand, it alludes to what is obvious and immovable, but at the same time it shows us that, sometimes, what we suppose to be logical and/or mechanical turns into a creative exercise with a certain dose of spontaneity. Curiosity leads him to observe, listen, analyze and deconstruct presupposed speeches at all times. His Instagram profile @reisosa shows the world these creative exercises or self-orders, as he himself calls them.
“Metaphor, simile, allegory, rebus… Reinaldo Sosa’s proposal is a journey back to the essence of photomontage and poetry. A virtuoso technical exercise that aspires to a simple language and that manages, on more than one occasion, to make the viewer smile with complicity.”
Raul Mendoza Director of the Josefa Medina Academy of Drawing and Painting (Gáldar)
ESTO NO ES UN GATILLO (THIS IS NOT A TRIGGER)
All artistic creation – musical, pictorial, theatrical or sculptural – requires the right talent and imagination so that skill and technique translate talent into sound, image, representation or figure. For centuries, learning its rules was the engine that generated creation. Today art, immersed in a dissolution of its limits and in the exploration of new contents, has meant that, although having a good execution helps, it is the freedom of the creative imagination that prevails. The contemporary artist, painter or sculptor, immersed in his own idea of art, moves away from the traditional rules and searches for techniques that adapt to his new expressive needs; Away from watertight, closed and concrete compartments, they conceptualize the content of their work as “art”, a free, open and broad exercise. The ready and willing eye looks for objects and images that, put to collide and in other contexts, generate fears, discoveries, horrors, strangeness or any other concept. Ceci n’est pas une pipe, said Magritte.
The famous pipe retains its validity for many current artists and very naturally in Reinaldo Sosa who also belongs to this type of craftsman. Graphic design is his profession and his goal is to create and transmit messages through images combined with text to reinforce and make a message clearer. Conceptual designer survives to fulfill assignments; Knowing that he is closer to the work of Joseph Kosuth in his One and Three Chairs, what he wants is to fill René’s pipe and question reality, its representation and language. Jack, horse and king is an order that Sosa makes to Reinaldo to satisfy himself, without the guidelines imposed by the client or the need to please the buyer, with the same need for creative freedom waved by Beuys or Brossa.
The game, the essential basis of all art, is the engine that triggers Reinaldo Sosa’s proposal. If his game is a manifestation of artistic fact or if his art is based on the most playful part of the human species, it is secondary. The important thing is that his proposal asks the viewer to play a perverse hybridization of animals and things, almost like a medieval bestiary. Playing in a crossroads of images that, translated into texts, is another image, it’s another message, it’s another text. A game of misunderstandings that, beyond seeking the complicity and complacency of the viewer, seeks to challenge, alter or disturb their state. The result is a disturbing sampler, a rich iconic inventory where satire and irony are conjured so that sometimes we feel like the one who walks without a shadow. This is not a trigger, Mr. Sosa.
César Ubierna, Cultural Producer
Social network: @reisosa
